"Google has taken a bold and difficult step for Internet freedom in support of fundamental human rights," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil-liberties group in Washington. "No company should be forced to operate under government threat to its core values or to the rights and safety of its users."

Google may not a modern day Robin Hood, but you gotta give them props for at least being bold enough to bring the issue up.

Rade wrote:Finally received a reply by posting in a thread at that Gaijin forum:

I no longer have any illusions of Google taking its "Don't Be Evil" motto seriously (so much so that I've switched to Bing as my default search engine; it's Microsoft indeed but their privacy terms are actually a bit less scary than Google's) but it's nice to see them taking a small step towards a "Don't Be Soulless Fucktards" mission statement.

"No company should be forced to operate under government threat to its core values or to the rights and safety of its users."

So they're pulling out of America too?

Whatever. The media will buy it, because they love highlighting the democratic failings of other regimes to distract from the corrupt political systems in their own countries which they benefit from (e.g. America's two party corporatist dictatorship.)

Yeah, it's one thing to gripe about the failings of the American political system, but that rhetoric falls pretty flat when you're comparing it to China. We have the Religious Right and all manner of morality police, but relatively speaking your speech is pretty damn free.

China is such a complex country. They treat themselves ifferent. Even the citizens don't have freedom to live as normal people, as if they are leading a life under a dictatorship. Google problems are just like that, too many restrictions imposed.

It sounds like you're just listening to hearsay. There are about as many Chinese folks complaining about the Chinese government as Russian folks who used to complain about Putin, in other words a very small group of minorities who got the short straw amongst a swarm of satisfaction.

That's despite how much some western media tries to portray regular foreign folks as being really unhappy and oppressed. And that's why the US is so despised in many parts of the world we're trying to "help."

Ganelon wrote:That's despite how much some western media tries to portray regular foreign folks as being really unhappy and oppressed. And that's why the US is so despised in many parts of the world we're trying to "help."

Hard to have a voice when you have one of the following
-Absolutely nothing at all
-A bullet in your head
-Are imprisoned for speaking your mind

I don't think it's that the majority of Chinese people are oppressed... it's that any of them are, for reasons we as white people feel are God given rights. It really depends on your idea of the word oppressed. Personally, I feel oppressed if the man decides what I can and can't listen to. Google feels the same.

Rade wrote:Finally received a reply by posting in a thread at that Gaijin forum: